Populist Governments Research Articles

Illiberal white fantasies and Netflix’s The Witcher

ABSTRACT This paper explores fantasy narratives that allow European nations to transcend the history of racial violence, and that connect Eastern and Western European manifestations of white innocence. This racialised connection highlights a relationship between the two Europes which hinges on mutual projections, which lives in narratives that have sustained schizophrenic national self-definitions in the eastern region and that have propped up the stability of national self-definitions within the western core. I zoom in on the current Polish and Hungarian right-wing populist regimes’ claims of racial exceptionalism by pointing to the ways in which locations in the east of the EU function as a resource for white innocence in the transnational media industries. I look closely at the relationship between the political-economic and discursive-cultural dimensions of white innocence through a case study of The Witcher franchise, based on Polish source material for a Netflix fantasy series, whose first season was shot primarily in Hungary. The Witcher involves multiple crossings where Eastern European national fantasies and global corporate fantasies of diversity and democracy converge in white innocence. These meeting points produce a racial and economic interface against which we can observe how whiteness operates in the regional networks of racial capitalism.

Patterns of populist mobilization: comparing narratives on COVID-19 in the global South

Abstract This article explores the narratives shaping the official discourse on COVID-19 in five countries governed by populists in different world regions. It is based on the assumption that a crisis like the pandemic constitutes a perfect occasion for populist mobilization, allowing populist leaders to construct reality in their favour by deliberately promoting own narratives about the pandemic, its origin and management. Analyzing 357 original-language speeches and statements by representatives of the populist governments of Brazil, Israel, India, Mexico and Turkey, the article shows that populists in power use crises to mobilize support in very different ways. Surprisingly, most populist governments neither resorted to anti-scientific claims or conspiratorial discourses attributing the crisis to obscure elites, nor blamed minorities not belonging to the ‘true people’. By contrast, except for Bolsonaro in Brazil, all other populist governments tried to mobilize support by emphasizing the strength of the ‘people’ or even by promoting an inclusive discourse of national unity, leaving aside the more divisive elements of their general populist discourse. Based on the cases analysed, the article concludes by developing hypotheses on the possible drivers of such variations in patterns of populist mobilization.

Rising Gender Inequities: The Case of Authoritarian Patriarchy

In 2014, India elected a populist government, the Bharatiya Janata Party, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In line with other populist leaders, such as the former U.S. President, Donald J. Trump, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary, and President Erdoğan of Turkey, Narendra Modi has brought about a rise in Hindu nationalism that promulgates values steeped in fundamental religious practices promoting the interests of the majority Hindu community at the expense of religious minority groups and marginalized and disenfranchised people of lower castes. A rise in gendered conservative norms deeply embedded in patriarchy and ethnonationalism has created a clear division in gender roles in nation-building. This study will utilize a social equity framework to examine ways in which systems of oppression, inequities, discrimination, and bias are maintained across gender, caste, and religion and perpetuated under the name of authoritarian patriarchy in India.

The Theology of the People, Pope Francis, and Populism: A Critical Latin American Perspective

This paper investigates the Argentinian “theology of the people” (“teología del pueblo”) and how it might run the risk of turning Catholic social thought into an ideology. The first part focuses on the political and theological notion of people and its link to the poor. The author recalls the Argentinian roots of this theology, summarizes its main tenets, and presents Pope Francis’s understanding of the theology of the people. The second part contrasts the theology of the people with the roots of populism in Latin America. The author explores the historical construction of the notion of people in the modern nation-building process, turns to caciquism as the dominant cultural framework of political power, and reviews Nadia Urbinati’s definition of populist regimes. The conclusion proposes to build upon Francis’s principles of common good dynamics to avoid the capture and recycling of the theology of the people’s language by populist regimes.

The economics of pandemics and the future course of populism

The relevant literature shows that populists come to power through various rhetorics by exploiting the incumbent orders and the problems they have caused. However, failures and disappointments in fulfilling their promises push them to employ increasingly authoritarian measures to silence society to stay in power by gradually changing the system, manipulating citizens through controlling media, and undermining fundamental institutions.By emphasizing the overall performance of populist governments during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, this article explores the future course of populist politics and governments after the pandemic. The paper concludes that although the pandemic has clearly shown the limits and capacity of many populist governments, the political and economic conjuncture in the post-pandemic era, coupled with the high tension of power transition, might bring new “opportunities” for the use of populists. With several defects and structural weaknesses of the existing liberal multilateral order, populism is here to stay with different implications for the multilateral liberal order and globalization.

Democracia pelo espírito: a Igreja Universal e suas interconexões com a democracia brasileira

Abstract The connection between Evangelical church actors and contemporary Brazilian federal politics has raised many speculations, especially regarding the association of these churches with neoliberalism and populist governments. In a different manner, this article aims to show how churches from the third wave of Pentecostalism, and the Universal Church in particular, engage in the most recent historical phase of Brazilian democracy that began in the late 1980’s. The grow of Universal Church and the democratic development of Brazil are investigated in parallel here, giving light to the different political connections and arrangements this church has been part of in the last decades. This makes it possible to understand what the alliances between the Universal Church and the country’s presidency actually mean for both the church institution and its common members.

Are they all the same? The Italian populist parties in parliament

Italy has a thirty-year tradition of populist parties, starting with the foundation of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) in 1993 . Since then, the Italian parliament has counted anoth- er three major populist parties – Northern League (Lega Nord – LN), Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia – FDI) and Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle – M5S) –, while the first fully-fledged populist government in Western Europe (Conte I, formed of Five Star Movement and League) won office in Italy in 2018 . With the sole, although fundamental, exception of the Five Star Movement, which is considered as a valence populist party, all the other Italian populists are rightist parties . This work consequently intends to compare the behavior of right-wing populists (FI, League, FDI) with that of valence populists (M5S) in parliament, but also that of rightist populists between each other . In addition, focusing on the last three Italian legislative terms (XVII, XVIII and XIX) will allow us to explore if and how these parties’ behavior changed due to their different institutional role (govern- ment or opposition) . Using data about parliamentary party groups’ voting behavior and different parliamentary activities (oral and written questions, and interpellations) at the Chamber of Deputies, this work speaks both to scholarship on populist parties and legislative studies and contributes to understanding how populist parties conceive and carry out their representative role within the institutions .

Наслідки повномасштабної російсько-української війни для позиціонування Тримор’я в глобальній політиці

The article discusses the term “Three Seas Initiative” – a product of the adaptation of the philosophical and geographical category “Intermarium” to the description of Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. The thesis is substantiated that the application of the category “Intermarium” to Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe is due not only to the “mental geography” of Polish political thought and the practical needs of Polish geopolitics of the 20th and 21st centuries but also to the objectively existing general characteristics of the region (its buffer status between geopolitical powers of Germany and Russia, the lower level of prosperity of this region compared to Western Europe, its predominantly Slavic character, which repeatedly pushes the implementation of pan-Slavist projects in the Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, the trends in social, in particular, cultural, economic and political, which are observed at least since the late 1980s). It is argued that the project “Three Seas Initiative” by A. Duda is a modern reincarnation of the idea of the Prometheists – “Intermarium”, created between the two world wars on the basis of the Jagiellonian idea of the Early Modern Age. This project arose as an opposition of rightwing conservative, poorer EU members to its left-liberal, rich participants with external support from the Eurosceptic, right-wing populist government of D. Trump in the USA. However, the evolution of the Three Seas Initiative finally led it to institutionalization as one of the cores of integration in the modern European Union at different speeds, with an emphasis on the development of cross-border communication and infrastructure projects in the region with the cooperation of the EU and the USA. It is emphasized that after the start of the Russian- Ukrainian war, the threat of its spread to the territory of the “Three Seas Initiative”, which the EU cannot overcome, forces the members of the initiative to seek direct military support from the United States in exchange for Washington’s support in its opposition to Beijing, an ally of Moscow. “Three Seas Initiative” could be perceived as an activation of the role of the region as one of the outposts of opposition to Chinese influence on the planet. In addition, the Russian- Ukrainian war involuntarily led to the achievement of one of the goals of the Three Seas Initiative - the development of the logistics infrastructure of its participants, due to the need to serve large-scale land and air movements of troops and the functioning of “grain” and humanitarian corridors from the European Union to Ukraine. Also, a full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war caused the resuscitation and development of the military-industrial complex of the Three Seas Initiative countries, its integration within the region and the rest of the EU, as well as with Ukraine, the USA, and South Korea, which gives a chance for high-tech economic growth of the participants of the project.

Book review of “Populism and antitrust. The illiberal influence of populist government on the competition law system” by de Maciej BERNATT

Book review of “Populism and antitrust. The illiberal influence of populist government on the competition law system” by de Maciej BERNATT

Recenzia lucrării “Populism and antitrust. The illiberal influence of populist government on the competition law system ”, de Maciej BERNATT

Recenzia lucrării “Populism and antitrust. The illiberal influence of populist government on the competition law system ”, de Maciej BERNATT

The winner takes all the trust: populism, democracy, and winner-loser gaps in political trust in Central and Southern Europe

ABSTRACT Studies typically find that supporters of populist parties exhibit low political trust. Drawing on research on winner-loser gaps in political support and the consequences of political polarization on attitudes, I re-examine the association between populism and political trust taking into account the supported party’s status in or outside of government, distinguishing between government leaders and junior coalition partners. I analyze data from the European Social Survey Rounds 1–9 from nine Central and Southern European countries that experienced populist parties as government leaders, combined with party characteristics from the Varieties of Party Identity and Organization as well as democracy scores from the Varieties of Democracy datasets. Results show that the effect of party status on political trust is stronger among supporters of populist than non-populist parties. Further, I find that supporters of populist governments enjoy greater trust advantages in less democratic contexts.

Populism and Antitrust: The Illiberal Influence of Populist Government on the Competition Law System, Maciej Bernatt

Book Review: Populism and Antitrust: The Illiberal Influence of Populist Government on the Competition Law System, Maciej Bernatt (Cambridge University Press 2022, ISBN: 9781108482837) 300 pp, £85,00. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3935/cyelp.18.2022.489 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution − Non-Commercial − No Derivatives 4.0 International License. Suggested citation: J Pecotić Kaufman, ‘Book Review: Populism and Antitrust: The Illiberal Influence of Populist Government on the Competition Law System, Maciej Bernatt (Cambridge University Press 2022)’ (2022) 18 CYELP 199.

The makers get it all? The coalitional welfare politics of Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. The case studies of Austria and Italy

AbstractThe article investigates whether and to what extent the welfare policies of Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) vary in diverse government coalitions. Relying on a multidimensional framework differentiating coalitional politics along the welfare size and deservingness dimension, we conduct a comparative case study analysing welfare reforms of the ‘standard’ centre-right/PRRP government coalition ÖVP-FPÖ in Austria and the ‘new’ populist government coalition M5S-Lega in Italy. We find that both PRRPs do not promote pro-welfare policies in general, but rather opt for selective expansion of benefits for ‘makers’, while aiming at retrenching benefits for ‘takers’. This welfare strategy includes pensioners and male breadwinner families but excludes migrants or long-term unemployed. The analysis furthermore shows that the central line of conflict with the centre-right ÖVP is mostly about the size of welfare policies, especially for ‘deserving’ citizens, while with the socially more left-leaning M5S it is rather centred around the deservingness dimension, e.g., benefits for takers. These results offer a more fine-grained understanding of the PRRPs’ welfare agenda and their coalitional welfare politics in office.

Populism and Professionalism in Brazilian Football during Getulio Vargas’s Regime (1930–1945)

During the first Getúlio Vargas administration (1930–1945), professional sport was established in Brazil. In a regime deeply marked by its pro-labour policies, one may at first think that professionalism was supported by the national government. However, that was not the case in Brazil. The struggle between professionals and amateurs created a schism in Brazilian sports that would last from 1933 to 1937 and that would still reverberate in the governmental intervention in sports in 1941. This article aims to analyse the relationship of Brazilian football ruling elites and the populist government of Getúlio Vargas in order to understand not only the top-down mobilization of sports by the authoritarian government of Vargas, but also the bottom-up initiatives that led the agents of the football elites to press for their own agendas.

To Hope or Not to Hope: Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Learning from Lebanon’s 2022 Election

This Rapid Communication examines Lebanon’s 2022 Parliamentary election in the context of other recent elections in consociational and populist regimes. The Lebanese electorate is now divided both by sectarian identity and by a pro- versus anti-establishment cleavage. This second cleavage makes Lebanon look more like other electoral authoritarian regimes. In light of scholarly work that ties electoral authoritarianism to late-stage neoliberalism, Lebanon’s recent election prompts renewed attention to the neo-liberal assumptions embedded in its and other consociational systems.

Populism and authoritarianism in the EU: what is the role of the euro?

ABSTRACT The article examines the impact of the euro on the political system through contrasting the experiences of eurozone countries with euro outsiders using a historical institutionalist perspective. While following the global financial crisis, many have argued that the homogeneity of rules within the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) facilitate the rise of populist movements, authoritarian challengers have emerged only outside the eurozone. The parallel application of Rodrik’s political economy trilemma and the ordoliberal tradition of the Freiburg school to the EMU provides the theoretical background for explaining this puzzle. A most- similar research design based on the comparative case study of Greece and Hungary is used to uncover the causal processes through which the EMU contributes to the resilience of liberal democracy. It is shown that while the limits on economic policy autonomy strongly hinder authoritarian tendencies within the eurozone even under a populist government, being outside the EMU is a necessary though not sufficient condition for the entrenchment of authoritarian rule.

Manufacturing the Ummah: Turkey’s transnational populism and construction of the people globally

Inspired by the concept of ‘transnational populism’ this paper investigates the efforts of a religious populist regime to narratively construct ‘the transnational people’ and ‘the transnational leader’ in diasporic spaces that Sunni Muslim minorities occupy. The paper aims to show how Turkey’s ruling party is constructing an Islamist civilisational populist narrative fortified with emotions and how it is disseminating it. We show that Turkey’s current regime has expanded its definition of ‘the people’ in domestic politics to include the whole global Sunni Muslim community (the Ummah), presenting itself as the representative, protector and saviour of the Ummah that has been victimised by the Crusader West. It also expanded its definition of diaspora to include non-Turkish Sunni Muslims/Islamic communities who did not originate from Turkey. Then, similar to its propagation of this narrative and emotional rhetoric at home, it has attempted to transnationalise this Islamist civilisational populist narrative and thes emotions to the Sunni Muslim diaspora communities through state and non-state apparatuses. As a novel contribution, this paper builds a bridge between diaspora studies, religion and populism to capture this transnational aspect of populism.

Populism and De Facto Central Bank Independence.

Although central bank independence is a core tenet of monetary policy-making, it remains politically contested: In many emerging markets, populist governments are in frequent public conflict with the central bank. At other times, the same governments profess to respect the monetary authority's independence. We model this conflict drawing on the crisis bargaining literature. Our model predicts that populist politicians will often bring a nominally independent central bank to heel without having to change its legal status. To provide evidence, we build a new data set of public pressure on central banks by classifying over 9000 analyst reports using machine learning. We find that populist politicians are more likely than non-populists to exert public pressure on the central bank, unless checked by financial markets, and also more likely to obtain interest rate concessions. Our findings underscore that de jure does not equal de facto central bank independence in the face of populist pressures.

Threat or corrective to democracy? The relationship between populism and different models of democracy

AbstractThe phenomenon of populism and its relationship with modern democracy has gained considerable attention in recent years. This article aims at advancing our understanding of how populism affects different models of democracy and tests the proposed arguments empirically. Building on a large scholarly literature on populism and democracy, we take stock of existing arguments and theorize which democratic models may be affected by populism in a positive or negative way. Moreover, we move beyond the normative debate and analyse the effect of populism in power on different models of democracy empirically. We do so by merging data on populist governments in Europe and Latin America from 1995 until today with the Varieties of Democracy dataset, which enables us to capture the relationship between populism and different democratic models in these regions. Despite mixed‐theoretical expectations, our results suggest a rather negative impact of populism on the electoral, liberal and deliberative models of democracy.

Judicial protection of the right to health in the context of Covid-19 and populism in Brazil

BackgroundThe Covid-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to the health systems of Latin America. However, the institutions and mechanisms created by the Social State of Law were unable to confront these new risks. As a result of that, populist governments have used this crisis as an opportunity to deepen the high levels of inequalities through the appropriation of power, wealth and social welfare. Courts have also reacted in order to guarantee the right to health; however, many challenges remain. ObjectiveTo examine the challenges and opportunities of the judicial protection of the right to health in the context of Covid-19 and Populism in Brazil. MethodologyQualitative, descriptive and exploratory. Documentary research was carried out by reviewing databases such as Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus. Indexed articles, jurisprudence, legislation, and literature were also reviewed. Additional publications were also identified through other sources. ResultsThere is an inversely proportional relationship between the intensity of the crisis and the level of judicial activism on the part of the Courts. Therefore, the more the scale and intensity of the crisis generated by populist governments in the context of pandemics, uncertainty, and inequality the more reflexive, and strategic courts should be and the more protection, defense and monitoring should be promoted in order to ensure the fulfilment of the right to the highest attainable level of health especially of the most vulnerable. On the other hand, the more compliance through the availability of health goods and services, and the more availability of health workers with better salaries, social security and working conditions the more resilient the State will be to face emergencies, which at the same time will promote fewer restrictions on fundamental rights. ConclusionsCourts play a special role in protecting the right to health, especially in the context of emergencies and crises. States must adopt measures by using the maximum available resources in order to protect the right to the highest attainable standard of health.